Eagle Ford Rig Count Flat at 267 – April 6, 2012

The Eagle Ford Shale drilling rig count held flat at 267 rigs working after dropping below 270 for the first time since early March. The biggest change was realized in Webb County, where 9 rigs moved out. Webb County hit a peak of 41 rigs running in November of 2011, but the rig count has fallen in step with natural gas prices since. Much of the Eagle Ford formation is liquids rich in the northern part of the county, but almost all other development is natural gas focused.

Lewis Petroleum had the biggest change of any of the major operators. The company dropped 6 rigs from 11 to 5. Watching their operated count over the next few weeks will help us determine if this is just one week blip in the rig count statistics or if the company has slowed down in response to gas prices.

Eagle Ford Oil & Gas Rigs

The natural gas directed rig count fell 8 to 67 running this week. That marks the first time we’ve fallen below 70 gas rigs running in the past year. DeWitt with 19 and Webb with 14 lead the natural gas focused counties. Oil directed activity jumped to 199 rigs and is back near all time highs set in mid-March.

Natural gas prices held almost flat week over week at 10-year lows and are trading at $2.09/mmbtu as of Friday afternoon. That’s after trading below $2 intra-day earlier in the week. Oil prices remained flat at $103 per barrel (WTI). Not bad considering the equity market performance during the week.

250 horizontal rigs are running and we have 1 storage well being drilled in La Salle County. Karnes County leads development with 40 rigs. La Salle (39), DeWitt (28), McMullen (26), Dimmit (23), Webb (23), Gonzales (21), Atascosa (12), and Live Oak (11) make up the top Eagle Ford counties.

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Drilling Rig Count by Operator

Operator Name

Prior Week

Current Week

Chesapeake

34

35

EOG Resources

29

28

Petrohawk (BHP)

20

19

ConocoPhillips

17

17

Marathon Oil (Hilcorp)

16

17

Pioneer Natural

12

12

Talisman Energy (Statoil)

11

12

Murphy Oil

9

10

Anadarko

9

9

Plains Exploration

9

8

Shell

6

6

SM Energy

6

6

Swift Energy

6

6

Lewis Petroleum

11

5

Rosetta

4

5

Exxon (XTO

4

5

Carrizo Oil & Gas

4

4

Cheyenne Energy

4

4

Hunt Oil

4

4

El Paso

3

3

All Others

57

52

Total

275

267

What is the Rig Count?

The Eagle Ford Shale Rig Count is an index of the total number of oil & gas drilling rigs running across a 30 county area in South Texas. The South Texas rigs referred to in this article are for ALL drilling reported by SmithBits and not solely wells targeting the Eagle Ford formation. All land rigs and onshore rig data shown here are based upon industry estimates provided by the Baker Hughes Rig Count and/or Smith Service Co’s (Schlumberger) Smith Rig Count.

Comments

I’m a motorman, working in North Texas right now. I’m looking at moving back to South Texas and get on a rig closer to home. Does anyone know which drilling companies are hiring right now and where their yard is located? thanks!

Two ways, Baker Hughes has a Rig App for the Iphone that can help you locate rigs and the Texas Railroad Commission site has the location of every well that has ever been permitted: http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/data/online/index.php. Use the public GIS server to find the well you are looking for.